"The question of whether god created the world, ... is a question about the relation of spirit to sensuality" (152 [623]) — the most important and most difficult question of philosophy, the entire history of philosophy revolves around this question (153 [623]) — the dispute between the Stoics and Epicureans, Platonists and Aristotelians, Skeptics and Dogmatists in ancient philosophy, Nominalists and Realists in the Middle Ages, Idealists and "Realists or Empiricists" (sic! 153) in modern times.

Partly on the character of people (bookish men versus practitioners) depends the inclination toward one or another philosophy.

"I do not deny... wisdom, goodness, beauty; I deny only that they, as these generic concepts, are beings, in the form of gods, or properties of god, or in the form of Platonic ideas, or Hegelian self-positing concepts"... (158) [628] — they exist only as properties of people.

Another cause of belief in god: man transfers to nature the representation of his own purposeful creation. Nature is purposeful — *ergo*, a rational being created it (160) [629-630].

"Precisely that which man calls the purposefulness of nature and grasps as such is in reality nothing other than the unity of the world, the harmony of causes and effects, in general that mutual connection in which everything in nature exists and acts" (161) [630].

... "We have no ground whatsoever to imagine that if man had more senses or organs, he would also know more properties or things of nature. There are not more in the external world, in inorganic nature, than in organic nature. Man has precisely so many senses as are necessary to perceive the world in its totality, in its entirety" (163) [632-633].

|
|————|
|
|

*important against agnosticism*

168 [636-637] — Against Liebig for phrases about "infinite (god's) wisdom"...

||¯*Feuerbach and natural science!! NB Cf. nowadays Mach & Co.*

174-175-178 [642-645] — Nature = republican; god = monarch. |¯*This is*

188-190 [653-656] — God was a patriarchal monarch, and now he is a constitutional monarch: he rules, but according to laws.

*NB*
*(cf. Dietzgen)*

Whence came spirit (*Geist*)? — ask the theists of the atheist (196) [661].

They hold too contemptible a conception (*despectierliche*: 196) of nature, too lofty a conception (zu hohe, zu vornehme (!!) *Vorstellung*) of spirit.

*clever!*

One cannot explain even a Government Councillor directly from nature (197) [662].

"For spirit develops together with the body, with the senses... it is bound up with the senses... whence the skull, whence the brain, thence also the spirit; whence the organ, thence also its function" (197 [662]: cf. above (197) "spirit

*Idem Dietzgen*

"And spiritual activity — is corporeal" (197-198) [662].

The origin of the corporeal world from spirit, from god leads to the creation of the world from nothing — "for whence does spirit take

"The Christian has a free cause of nature, a master of nature, to whose will, to whose word nature is obedient — a god who is not bound by the so-called causal nexus, not bound by necessity, not chained to the chain connecting effect with cause and cause with cause, whereas the pagan god is bound by natural necessity and cannot even free his favorites from the fatal lot of death." (Thus, Feuerbach systematically says: Notwendigkeit der Natur).

"But the Christian has a free cause, because in his desires he does not bind himself to the general order, to the necessity of nature" (301) [750]. ((And

NB
NB
But p. 302 [751]: "...

NB
"To make nature dependent on god means to make the world order and the necessity of nature dependent on will" (312) [759-760].

But p. 313 (top) [760] - „Naturnotwendigkeit"!!

In religious representations "we have... examples of how man in general transforms the subjective into the objective, i.e., makes it something existing
* — "the course of nature." Ed.
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V. I. LENIN

Entleibter Geist* = god

"Thus Christians tear the spirit, the soul of man from the body and make this torn, disembodied spirit their god" (332) [777].

Religion gives man an ideal (332). Man needs an ideal, but a human one, corresponding to nature, not a supernatural one:

"Let our ideal be not a castrated, bodiless, abstract being, but — a whole, real, many-sided, perfect, educated man" (334) [778].

physisch **

((a remarkable equation!))

"Man has no representation whatsoever, no conception of any other reality, any other existence, except sensuous, physical" ... (334) [779].

¯¯¯¯¯

NB

"If they are not ashamed to allow the origin of the sensuous, material world from the thinking or will of some spirit, if they are not ashamed to assert that things are not thought because they exist, but exist because they are thought, then let them also not be ashamed to allow their origin from the word, let them not be ashamed to assert that words do not exist because things exist, but that things exist only by virtue of words" (341-342) [785-786].

* — disembodied spirit. Ed.
** — sensuous, physical. Ed.

God without the immortality of the human soul is god only in name:
... "Such a god is... the god of certain rationalist natural scientists, which is nothing other than personified nature or natural necessity, the universe, with which, of course, the representation of immortality does not accord" |¯349¯| [791].

The last (30th) lecture, pp. (358-370) [799-810], can be cited almost in its entirety as the most typical specimen of Enlightenment atheism, with a socialist tinge (about the masses in need, etc., p. 365 in the middle [805]), and so forth. The concluding words: my goal is to make you, listeners,

"from friends of god — friends of man, from believers — thinkers, from those who pray — workers, from candidates for the world beyond — investigators of this world, from Christians who, according to their own admission and consciousness, are"

Further follow
Here there are many details, citations containing repetitions.
All this I pass over. I note only the most important of what presents any interest — the foundation of morality is egoism (392) [829].

("Love of life, interest, egoism")... "there exists not only solitary or individual egoism, but also social egoism, family egoism, corporate, communal, patriotic" (393) [830].

* — appendices and notes. Editor.

... "Good is nothing other than that which answers to the egoism of all people"... (397) [834].

NB

NB

The germ of historical materialism, cf. Chernyshevsky

"It is enough, indeed, for this to cast a glance at history! Where does a new epoch begin in history?
Everywhere only there where against the exclusive egoism of a nation or caste the oppressed mass or majority puts forward its own fully legitimate egoism, where classes of people (sic!) or entire nations, having won victory over the arrogant conceit of the dominant minority, emerge from the wretched and oppressed condition of the proletariat into the light of historical and glorious activity.

So too must the egoism of the now oppressed majority of humanity realize and will realize its right and will begin a new epoch of history. What must be abolished is not an aristocracy of education, of spirit — no!
But it is inadmissible that a few should be noble while all the rest are rabble; on the contrary, all must — at least should — be educated; not property in general should be destroyed — no! but it is inadmissible that a few should have property while all the rest have nothing; property should exist for all" (398) [835].

NB

Feuerbach's "Socialism"

These lectures were delivered from 1. XII. 48 to 2. III. 49 (Preface, p. V [490]), and the preface to the book is dated 1. I. 51.

How strongly already

59

Examples from the classics of the indifferent use of the words gods and nature (398-399) [835-836].
Page

"The secret of religion is, in the final analysis, merely the secret of the combination in one and the same being of consciousness with the unconscious, of will with the involuntary" (402) [839].

Page 408 [844] - an excellent quotation from Seneca (against atheists), that they, you see, make nature into god. Pray! - work! (page 411 [846])

Nature is god in religion, but nature as Gedankenwesen*.

"Bottomless is human ignorance, and boundless is human power of imagination; the power of nature, deprived, by reason of ignorance, of its basis, and thanks to fantasy - of its limits, is divine omnipotence" (414) [849].

... "Objective essence as subjective, the essence of nature as distinct from nature, as human essence, the essence of man as distinct from man, as non-human
* - conceptual essence. Ed.
** - Very well put. Ed.
60
V. I. LENIN

essence, - that is what a divine being is, that is what the essence of religion is, that is what the secret of mysticism and speculation is"... (415) [850].

Speculation in Feuerbach = idealist philosophy NB.

———
NB
profoundly true!

"Man separates in thinking the adjective from the noun, the property from the essence... And the metaphysical god is nothing other than a brief enumeration or aggregate of the most general properties extracted from nature, which, however, man by means of the power of imagination, precisely through such separation from the sensuous essence, from the matter of nature, transforms again into an independent subject or being" (417) [852].

NB
Remarkable (against Hegel and idealism)

Plays the same role

... "So then, is there an eternal rupture and contradiction between Being and Thinking?" Yes, only in the head; but in reality this contradiction has long been resolved, only, to be sure, in a manner corresponding to reality, and not to your school concepts, namely - resolved by means of no fewer than five senses" (418).

excellently put!

* - Being, essence. Ed.

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Page of a manuscript by V. I. Lenin. Notes on Feuerbach's book "Lectures on the Essence of Religion." - 1909

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